Color
by sharkinterviewee
Summary: Amy discovers Jake's hidden artistic talent when she finds some beautiful drawings he's been making of her secretly. Jake splashes color outside the lines of her carefully constructed life (making it glimmer and glow in a whole new way), and Amy helps him see the world is more than just shades of gray (because there's a whole spectrum of visible light out there).


**AN:** **Pretty established relationship one shot, but has bits of flash back. Not set during an exact place in the series timeline, but some time after the beginning of season 2 since Jake's being undercover is mentioned as happening before their relationship began.**  
 **No smut in this, but I felt it was too suggestive for a teen rating.**  
 **Also, when you get to the description of the color yellow half way through the story, the color you should be picturing is the same shade as the picture/icon for this fic.**

* * *

 **Here I stand today.**

He wanted to see her in yellow. Really she looked good in anything, any color, but there's subtle differences and each hue emphasizes a different part of her. In red: she's breathtaking, black: sexy, blue: suave, green: calming, and so on. Whatever she was wearing, or not wearing, he still couldn't believe he had her. That she loved him back. Whenever she smiled at him, she looked like happiness. And home.

But he still hadn't seen her in yellow, and that didn't sit quite right with him. He needed to find a way to fix that.

* * *

 **Early in the days I (first) knew your love.  
AKA: A really, really long time ago.**

Jake made her promise not to tell anyone when she first found out. It was on their fourth official date (because the bet was very unofficial) and they had ended up back at his place. His bedroom, more specifically. They were in the middle of haphazardly tearing each others clothes off when they were so rudely interrupted by the buzzer at his door. He tore himself away from her and promised to be right back. So Amy was left alone in his room, but after 30 seconds by herself, she got tired of waiting. She had technically seen his bedroom before, but that was at his old place. She'd never been inside his room since he moved into Gina's- but it wasn't all that different from his last one, only a bit smaller. He had his laptop closed on his desk next to a pile of books resting on top of some papers (the books actually had some vaguely smart words in the titles like 'pathology' and 'systems theory' that she was sure he used as a paperweight rathers than read one word of them). He had three alarm clocks placed strategically around his room (one on the bedside table, one on his desk, and one on his dresser by the door) and she remembered with a smile about when he told her that he had to have multiple, separate alarms because they ensured that he actually had to walk to turn them off, and had them set a couple of minutes apart from each other. She realized for neither the first or the last time that he really was a lost cause, and that only made her smile more.

She had just begun going through his poor taste in DVDs when the AC kicked on, and she noticed the ruffling of the papers on the desk, or at least the ruffling of the parts that weren't covered by the books. She knew she should have ignored it, but eventually her curiosity got the best of her and she walked over (she told herself that she was only doing it so she could move the books and stop the annoying noise, but that was a flat out lie). They were a couple of loose leaf papers that she was sure she could manage not to snoop through until she noticed what was written at the bottom of one of the pages:

ntiago

She was sure that couldn't be anything but her last name, and she absolutely couldn't resist looking at that. She carefully moved the books to the side, but when she saw what laid under them she had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming.

It's her. She would be able to tell even if 'Amy' or 'Santiago' wasn't written on the bottom of each page along with a date that she was assuming it was made. They were really good. It looked more like someone took a photo and edited it on a computer to make it look like a drawing than something that was originally and only done by hand. Some of them weren't finished, and a good portion of them had smudges around the edges, but they were all amazing. Unreal. She had no idea that something based on her could ever be so breathtaking. The sketches made her look like some Greek goddess of beauty, much better looking than she actually was.

"Hey, sorry that took so long. Every few weeks this guy's packages get sent here and I have to-" he began as he turned into his room, but froze in the middle of his sentence when he saw the papers spread across the desk, and Amy holding one in her hand and running her fingers over it. His mouth went dry and he cursed himself for not cleaning up better in case they ended up coming back here. The last thing he wanted was for her to find them. He thought maybe after they had been together for a while he could ask her to sit for him and he could tell her about his drawing vice then. He definitely did not want her finding out he had been secretly sketching her for god knows how long. Luckily he had only left six or seven on his desk, when he had at least 50 more littering the floor of his closet since he ran out of places to put them. He knew he needed to say something, but he had no idea what. He couldn't think of a valid reason for him to have them other than the fact that he drew them, but damn, he needed to come up with an excuse quick.

"Did you make these?" Amy asked softly with her back still turned to him. He was sure that her quiet voice was because she was upset, because who wouldn't be. It was a pretty creepy thing for him to do, wasn't it?

"I'm sorry," he finally said, not able to think of anything better to redeem himself with. She turned around and stared at him with those piercing, way too honest eyes that could see right through him.

"Why are you sorry? They're amazing."

He tried to hold back, but he felt his face heat up from the praise and just how happy he was that she wasn't mad and that she actually seemed to like them.

"You did all of these?"

"I probably should have told you," he said lamely as he scratched the back of his head. He had never felt so embarrassed in his life, not when he needed stitches after begging Charles to throw that six inch letter opener at him because he was 'a pro' and 'totally could catch it', or even when his mom walked in on him masturbating when he was 15.

"Is that how you see me?" Amy asked almost demurely.

"What do you mean?"

"Do I really look that beautiful to you?"

"You look that beautiful period. To everyone." He hadn't noticed until that moment, but she had started bridging the gap between them, and he has absolutely no reason to, but he began to back up. He was inching back, but her strides forward were bigger than his baby steps in retreat so she reached him in no time and captured his lips in a kiss.

When she trailed her lips down his neck and began unbuttoning his shirt he was so caught up in her movements that he didn't even care about what just happened, only focused on feeling her. He pushed her down on the bed and she grinned as he moved over her, kissing along her neck and collar bone in a way that turned her grin into a slack jawed, open mouthed pant.

* * *

 **Truth be told, I was yours long before I considered letting you know. I tried to move slow and steady, but you threw that all out the window, along with my patience.**

They ended up both lying on their backs beside each other covered in sweat and some other bodily liquids.

"Do you have any more? Drawings? Of me?" Amy asked when their breathing slowed down from the gasps they were taking moments before.

Jake wasn't sure if it was just him getting caught and that he might as well have given up at that point, or if he's just stunned into honesty coming down from the best sex of his life. He has a feeling it might be a little of both, but he tells the truth either way. "Loads. Literally years worth."

"I want to see them," she demanded, and he wasn't sure he would ever be able to refuse her again.

"I have a box or two in my closet. Most of them are in a storage locker I got a while back." He sighed as she laid her head on his chest listening to the hammer of his heart beat. "Don't tell anyone, okay?"

"That you have a hidden obsession of drawing me? Don't worry, your secrets safe with me," Amy teased.

"About the drawing. At all," he clarified, and she turned her head to look at him like he's more than a tiny bit crazy.

"Why? You're absolutely amazing at it."

He didn't say anything in response but just frowned slightly, so she acquiesced.

"Fine, I won't. But only if you show me the rest of them," she conditioned.

"Deal."

She kissed him then, and felt all of his troubles melt away under the touch of her fingers.

* * *

 **I'm addicted to your company. I'll pretend you don't have such a grip on me if you swear to not let go**.

He made good on his promise a few days later and took her to the storage locker. It was surprisingly uncluttered, considering how full it was. There was the stuff that couldn't fit at his new place that he was too attached to get rid of (including the four massage chairs that she would remind him to put on craigslist), two filing cabinets, what looked like a tub of knick-knaks, but there was an overwhelming amount of cardboard boxes with lids are dates scrawled on the outside with black marker. There had to be at least 25 of them stacked haphazardly on top of one another.

"You came to the nine nine in 2010, right? March or April?"

"April," Amy responded automatically. April 12th, 2010. The day she started the best job in her life. The day she met the best man in the world, who was almost crawling before her to find the proper box.

"Right. Second Monday of April," he murmured to himself, then sighed. "You know I'm no good with dates. You might as well just tell me so I don't spend forever trying to figure this out."

"12th," she told him, and he resumed his mission of scouring his collection to find the right box.

She was struck by how much he remembered, because he truly was awful with dates. She had to remind him every year a week before his mother's birthday so he could get a present for her on time. She was initially impressed that he had remembered the right year, much less the right day (excluding the number portion). If you had asked her before that, she probably wouldn't have been able to tell you which week in the calendar the 12th came on five years ago. Now that she thought about it, she did remember being upset that she wasn't able to start at the beginning of the month because of her contract at her previous station, and had to settle for the following week (even though she was convinced that it would make a worse impression). It seemed like Jake was just full of surprises lately.

She found it interesting that some of the boxes were filled completely by two weeks worth, while others were well over 6 months- so she figured he went through lulls every so often. She made note that a few of them were dated as far back as what were surely his high school days, and she knew she would have to take a peek at those sometime.

Finally he seemed to find the right one so he pulled out a box that was second from the bottom, coming precariously close to toppling all of the ones above it over like a Jenga tower. It was marked from 2010/03/21- 2010/04/15, and she was certain that he would only have a few (at most) of her since it cut off so soon after she started working there, the rest of it certainly filled with drawings of before her arrival.

Jake ran through the sideways stored papers and pulled out the bottom of one every few centimeters to check the date, and finally stopped when he found one labeled the 12th, and pulled out a stack of at least two inches and laid it on the floor in front of her, inviting her to sit down with him, which she accepted.

The top drawing was of her wearing her nervous smile that she only used when she was trying to impress someone (and often failing miserably at it). She hadn't realized she had used that smile on him.

Amy spread out the sketches in front of her, surprised to see that most of them were of her. Out of the stack of two inches (of pretty thin paper), only two of them didn't involve her. She could see several erased subjects that he had covered up with her, but she could still make out the impressions of some feathers and skylines that dipped past her hairline or ran out from behind her jaw.

He noticed that she took special attention to the ones that he had erased and drawn her over and said "I kept trying to draw other stuff, but it kept turning into you, so I stopped fighting it." As an afterthought he added "These don't really look like you. It took me longer than I would have liked to memorize your face."

But he was wrong, because they looked exactly like her. When she was standing with her hand on her hip next to a shadow of a figure she was talking to, when she was at her desk biting her lip trying to figure something out on paper (probably how to fill out the different style of reports they used from her last job), or when she was concentrating on something on her computer and she had the tip of her tongue sticking out (a habit that she thought she had ridden herself of by then).

"You have a lot of boxes here. Enough that someone could be buried alive if one of the stacks fell over. It's probably a health code violation to have this much paper in here and not a single fire extinguisher or sprinkler."

"Yeah, I'm kinda a hoarder when it comes to this stuff," Jake used as an excuse, but he was glad of the way Amy was smiling at him, like he had done something pleasing, even though he didn't consider the art a big deal.

"You draw a lot of girls before me?" She asked with a suggestive smirk, knowing what his answer would be. Her partner was a show off, through and through, so there was no way he hadn't used his talent his talent to get some girls.

"I have stock photo books hidden under my mattress like a stash of porn mags. They're good for practicing facial expressions on different looking people." Amy couldn't quite believe what she was hearing.

"You mean you've never tried to get with someone by drawing her?" She tried to ignore the other thing implied by his statement. Not only had he not used his gift to get some action, but that he made it sound like she was the first girl he drew (this much at least). Amy had assumed that he probably drew all of his girlfriends with the frequency and effort that he did her, but apparently that wasn't the case. And all of the ones lying before her were from years before she was his girlfriend. So, yeah, she felt a little special.

"Not really, no," Jake shrugged.

"You should have. Guaranteed to work on anyone you set your eyes on," she informed him in a playful tone.

"Impressed with my skills, Santiago?" He asked with a smirk, and she crawled on to his lap, careful to avoid all of the lovely papers on the floor as she kissed him.

* * *

 **The sky is a reminder of your grace, so please forgive me when I get distracted trying to connect the constellations in your eyes. I'm sure there's a pattern because the golden flecks are placed with such precision that it has to have some meaning. So keep in mind I'm not staring, just trying to figure out the answer to the universe.**

Eventually, he started to show her his new stuff. He got pretty relaxed about the ones in the storage locker, but was more protective of the recent ones, especially the ones that came after she learned he was drawing her. She was curious, but didn't ask to see them.

Eventually Jake showed her of his own volition. Some of them were of their dates, or at work, but a good portion of them are just her around different parts of his place. A lot of times in his sketches he would just let the background from the scene fade into the whiteness of obscurity, but he always filled in the details of the ones at his apartment. Like he always wanted to remember exactly how she looked curled up on his couch, or standing against the kitchen counter making coffee- just wanting to remember everything about the instance. In a lot of them she's wearing his clothes, so she made a mental note to do that more often since he seemed to like it so much.

* * *

 **I'm sorry I made us late. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.**

Sometimes he would come home and sketch her (because, he maintained, it helped him think). When he was stuck on a case, he would come home and try to map out her features while she watched him out of the corner of her eye (since she was always watching TV or reading when he did it. Or at least pretending to. Most of her concentration was on her stolen glances of him). He said that it helped him with "Detective's block", though sometimes she was sure that he just used that as an excuse because he was afraid she would say no otherwise. Which she never, ever would.

* * *

 **For the time being. I'm marking the miles, but I can think of worse things to do than get lost with you.**

He still won't do anything close to actual art at work though. Flip books with stick figures in a gun fight, or crudely designed robots with shark cannons for arms. Sometimes she wondered what would be so bad if their coworkers knew (other than his childish arrogant facade to be ruined, if only for a moment). Most of the time, though, she was glad to have this secret part of him all to herself.

* * *

 **I want to know everything about you. And if you happen to learn about me too, that wouldn't be so bad either.  
AKA: just a regular long time ago**

One day she came over to his place a good half hour before he was expecting her, and didn't notice her entering since he had given her a key the week before. So she caught him in the act of placing a sketch book on the top of a book case so it wouldn't be visible from any vantage point in the room. A mischievous thrill overtook her because she knew it had to be good for him to hide it from her. She considered calling him out on it, but thought better and snuck back to the door while he was still turned away, opening and closing the door much louder this time so he would think she just walked in.

He turned around and gave her a dazzling smile. "You're here early."

"I know. I missed you."

* * *

 **If you need to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, I would gladly go barefoot for you.**

It was a few days before she felt safe going after what he thought he had hidden so well. She knew she had the perfect opportunity when he told her he was going to take a quick shower, which (for Jake) meant at least half an hour, so she was sure she had time. She waited a couple of minutes after the water turned on and he started singing before she reached up to the top of the bookcase to skim her fingers along in search of her prize.

Jake wasn't much taller than her, but he did have freakishly long arms so it took her a few tries to be able to grip the sketch book good enough that she could bring it down, which just made her feel more accomplished when she succeeded.

It looked the same as the other ones he used, but she knew there had to be something in the contents that made him feel the need to hide it from her. She sat on the couch ready to tear into it, but paused when she opened it.

The first page was of her sleeping, and she loved how peaceful he made her look. She was feeling calmer just looking at it, and the next two pages were of her resting with soft shades that made her chest feel like it was filled with static.

By the fourth page, she had gotten to the good stuff. Nude portraits. Of her. He managed to make her look a thousand times more gorgeous, but somehow still herself. Amy had always like how he studied her when she was writhing underneath him, and she was glad to find that he was putting what he saw to good use. His attention to detail was amazing, especially considering the fact that he was recreating them all from memory. He made note of every little scar, somehow made her messy hair look pretty, and conveyed the flush that came over her skin in simple shades of gray.

She hadn't even noticed the water turned off or him getting out until she heard Jake curse behind her. "Fuck."

She turned around to grin at him superiorily while he tried to hide his guilt (which he completely failed at).

"You know, all you had to do was ask," she chided him.

"What?"

"For me to pose. For you," she made it clear how ridiculous she thought it was that he hadn't even tried to ask, and that he thought she would even consider the possibility of saying no. And then she added with a playful tone, "You can be Jack and I can be Rose. But you have to promise to make me prettier than Kate Winslet."

"Won't even have to try," he swore.

* * *

 **When all that separates us is the air, I find myself hating oxygen (more than usual).**

So she does pose for him naked. A lot. And it ends in sex. A lot. Amy wished she could stay still, but it got her so hot the way he studied her, concentrated on nothing but her, his eyes roaming her body. The sessions usually ended when she just couldn't take it anymore and she would do whatever she could to make him put down his pencil and bring his body to hers. Most times she would play with herself, adding in some moans here in there while he tried to ignore her until he just couldn't force himself to take his eyes off of her again. He would growl in frustration, then toss away his supplies when he would finally join her.

"You're impossible," Jake told her in between kisses every time.

"You love it," she responded every time.

* * *

 **We go through this, now and again. Two steps forward, one step back. But always together.**

He kept a dream journal, in the loosest sense of the term. A dream sketch book, really. Sometimes his dreams were filled with her. Sometimes they were all kaleidoscope visions and impossible cityscapes that were beyond beautiful. Other times the pages were contained with the weirdest things, like piranhas swimming through blood veins or black holes in the middle of devouring planets and all of the surrounding light. He always insisted that his freakiest dreams weren't nightmares, just weird, even though she was sure she would wake up drenched in sweat if she had them.

She never snooped though. Only ever looking at the pages he would bring out and show her. She knew he had nightmares in their too. Actual nightmares, that he would wake up from a with a scream in his throat and his limbs entangled in the sheets from tossing and turning. Ones that he wouldn't be able to get out of his mind until she reached out for him and pulled them together and whispered that it was alright until his breathing slowed. They didn't come out all too often, but she was pleased that she seemed to have a sixth sense of when he was stuck in one because she would always wake up before they got too bad and she could shake him from his sleep.

He never talked about them, but she suspected a good amount of them stemmed from his time undercover. She wished she could do something more, but had to accept that maybe all he needed was someone to bring him back to reality, a service which she was more than willing to supply.

Amy had nightmares too, but whenever one began she would always start whimpering, and he would pull her closer without even waking up. Even if she didn't wake up and realize that he was holding her close and tight, she could always sense when his arms were wrapped around her in her dreams, because everything dark and frightening would be replaced by warmth and comfort and safety. And the times when she did wake up, she could just listen to his steady inhale and exhale and the occasional snore he let out until she fell into the rhythm of his inhales and exhales to drift back to sleep.

Some of her bad dreams were about being trapped in small, dark places, and some of them were falling or being chased. By far the worst nightmares she had were the ones where Jake got hurt. She had them most often when he was undercover and before they were together. She wasn't sure how she survived them back when she didn't wake up with him next to her healthy and breathing and heart still beating.

Her nightmares were becoming rarer and rarer, and the frequency of his were dying down too. Amy was sure that bad dreams were part of the job description, but it made her happy that they were helping each other without even trying, just physical presence being enough. It made her happy that they were better just by being together. Of course it was obvious that they were better together in a myriad of other ways, but there was something about them being able to rescue each other from the depths that made her pleased.

* * *

 **If I pretend I deserve you long enough, do you think that would make it true? Right now it seems like the only option I have.**

Whenever Jake had third person dream, and he could see himself with her, he spent barely any time outlining his silhouette, and maybe a few seconds here or there on clothes and hair (so he would know it was him) but he never drew his own face, just focused his effort on Amy. She always told him the no face thing was weird, but he never saw a point in drawing himself, because he didn't matter at all. Even in his own dreams he wasn't the main character, but he had no problem giving that spot to Amy. Sometimes, in real life, it felt like she was the star of a movie and somehow fell in love with an extra she wasn't meant to have more than a glimpse of. But god, he was so thankful she took a second glance. He didn't know how it was possible for Amy to love him back, but that fact was the single most important thing in the universe.

* * *

 **Sometimes I'm a travesty, but your light is so dazzling that even if I'm on fire I'm glad to be burning with you.**

She liked all of his weird color descriptions in his dream journal. He said he could never get colors to work right, much preferring the simple gray of pencil shading. But if he had a dream that he didn't want to forget the exact colors of, he would write little descriptions that only Jake could think of so he could picture the right hue in the future.

"Color of that cactus you killed in high school after you drowned it in water"

"Color of the bleach spot on NYPD sweat shirt"

"Color of those sick nasty corpses that are only found after 2-5 days being buried under snow"

"Color of Amy's blush on her cheeks when you tell her she's gorgeous enough times in a row that she really believes it."

* * *

 **I've resolved to not feel guilty for asking you to stay.**

One day he left his journal open on his bedside table. She knew that it was a mistake and that he didn't mean to do it, but she couldn't help but look when she went to go close it.

Her hair was done in a loose side braid and she was wearing a simple, wide strapped circle sundress that was actually very lovely. Jake always had a habit of drawing her prettier than she was, but she thought that she had a chance of pulling the look off.

"Color of everything those times before a tornado and the sky tinges outside with yellow like you're looking through the shittiest instagram filter, and the world is washed out and bright and light and yellow and gray all at the same time, but it's amazing too."

Then she noticed that he wrote two other words off to the side that weren't referring to color at all (which she had never seen him do before). "Beautiful" and "Happy" were spelled on the edge, both earning several underlines.

She shut the journal and started planning a surprise.

* * *

 **I see you every time I close my eyes, and I don't mind.**

It took Amy over three weeks to find a dress that was even close. She looked online, but even though she was living in the 21st century, the internet still wasn't advanced enough to put together all of her search words and find something that matched the description. She found a couple that would do, but none of them felt right. None of them were the right color. They were all off: too bright, too mustard, too green, too neon, off white, or just looked like the tip of a highlighter. She wasn't sure how it was possible that she had looked at so many shades and tints of yellow and still none of them were right.

When she had reached the third week of her search, she began to consider just settling for one of the not-good-enough dresses, but she remembered her excitement when she first had the idea, and she knew she didn't want to settle. Not yet, at least.

Before the month was up, she had a girl's day with Kylie. Just the usual, driving down the highway with the radio blasting and them screaming along, pit stop at a frozen yogurt shop, bought tickets to a movie (that they left half way through because they were both about to die of boredom). Kylie suggested that they look around a second hand shop so their half hour drive to the theater wouldn't be for nothing.

Amy knew how boring and stodgy her enthusiasm for old things was, but she had more or less come to terms with it by that point. Jake often gave her trouble for her doilies, but he'd also give her skeleton keys, dusty books, and even a brass music box (which was probably her favorite). The oldest book he ever found for her was of poetry from 1839, and it had one of the best smells in the world. Even though she pestered him, Jake would never tell her where he found all of the gifts. At most he swore that he wasn't taking them from the evidence locker (which she double checked the inventory now and again just to make sure).

She guessed that was why the dress thing meant so much to her. Sure he acted like a 12 year old 50% of the time, and a 6 year old 25% of the time, but the last quarter he spent being sweet and romantic and some other very adult things that took her breath away.

He was always finding new ways to show her he loved her, on top of saying it whenever it popped into his mind (which was very often).

So Amy had thought she had finally found something creative and unexpected that she could do. He was so bizarre, and whimsical, and fantastic, and starry eyed that sometimes he didn't seem real. Most of the time, actually. Whether it was his absolutely insane ideas that often conflicted with the laws of physics, or when he was whispering in her ear and causing shivers to run down her back- he seemed more like a character in a movie.

She was plain old Amy Santiago: commonplace, average at best, and absolutely nothing special.

He was Jake Peralta, like he just walked out of a daydream.

And somehow, he still wanted to waste all of his love on her.

She had walked a few steps past the fabric, only noted that it was a pretty color when she stopped in her tracks and realized that she had been searching for that color for what felt like a lifetime.

There was the dress, and it was perfect. Nearly perfect. Downright exquisite compared to her other options, and she was sure she would never find anything closer to the drawing than what was right in front of her.

The length was off an inch or two, and the neckline a little deeper, but the main difference was the sash around the waist, but it wasn't too distracting since it was the same color as the dress. And the color was perfect. She was sure that she wouldn't find anything closer than if someone had created it by looking at the sketch, so she wasted no time in purchasing it (and sent it home with Kylie so Jake wouldn't discover it while she planned).

* * *

 **My head and my heart are often in conflict, but the first thing they agreed on was that I couldn't be happy without you. You make perfection look effortless, but without a doubt loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done.**

The Saturday following Amy's discovery of the perfect dress she sent Jake off to run some superficial errands to give her time to prepare. Which really, just meant that she had time to run off to Kylie's without him noticing her absence for any amount of time. Besides, there was no way in hell she would be able to pull off that side braid herself without looking like a natural disaster.

She had a plan to make the whole surprise really a surprise, so when she was all done up she hightailed it out of there and laid in wait. Amy was beyond glad that the dress actually fit (even though Kylie was the backup plan to make changes to it) but everything was working out fantastic.

It was a pretty warm day, which she was thankful because she did not want to be outside in a dress below 80 degrees (which was a possibility when it came to Brooklyn in May).

Prospect Park had always been one of the prettiest places in Brooklyn. Amy's favorite time to go there was fall, when all the leaves were changing colors and falling to the ground begging to be stepped on. Every Autumn she would bundle up and force Jake to go on a walk with her under the trees (though force wasn't exactly the right word. He never argued, and she knew he liked it too even if he would never admit it). The best part about fall was that it wasn't so cold that they had to wear mittens, and she could hold his hand the whole time.

But the park in spring wasn't half bad. The whole place was green and alive, and the sunlight that filtered through the tree tops to fall into patterns of disarray of light and shadow was something to behold. It was as crowded as it usually was that time of year, but it didn't detract from the beauty, and maybe even added to it. Everything around was bustling with movement- people walking, children running, dogs playing, and even the birds were active that day. Sometimes it was good to be alone, but sometimes you just needed a little reminder that you don't exist in a vacuum, and needed some other living beings around you to remind you that the world isn't some empty void. This was one of those days (for Amy at least).

She didn't even have to wait 10 minutes after her arrival at the park for Jake to get home and find out that she wasn't there.

Jake:

 _Where r u?_

Amy:

 _Prospect Park._

J:

 _What in the world r u doing there?_

A:

 _Aren't I allowed to do something spontaneous for once?_

J:

 _No u r not. Its against the laws of nature. The whole of reality will collapse the moment that Amy Santiago decides 2 do something spontaneous 4 once. Well, this universe had a good run. It was nice knowing ya_

A:

 _Shut up and meet me by that naked statue that you love so much._

* * *

 **Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Days long gone, every second of this moment, and down the road. I'll be with you.**

Amy hid out by a bench under an oak tree. She was careful to always keep her head low and pretended to be absorbed on her phone in case Jake noticed her, though she was pretty unrecognizable with the new hair style and all. She saw him the moment he arrived, dressed in what he refused to call anything but his "civvies" (which today meant a plain gray T shirt and blue jeans). As much as she enjoyed his work attire (and actually looked anything close to presentable) she preferred his relaxed dress code more. Truth be told though, her favorite was no clothes.

Jake:

 _Here. I don't see u_

She had a good view of him from her position on the shaded bench, and watched him as he peered over the heads of the passersby to try and spot her, until he finally gave up in frustration.

Amy:

 _I'm almost there. I'll be at the arch in less than 60 seconds._

J:

 _You're late?! The horror!_

Of course she was really sitting in the exact opposite direction, but she needed him facing the other way so she could sneak up behind him properly. As she expected, he turned to her supposed entrance and stood up straighter than normal in an attempt to be able to spot her ASAP.

Amy slinked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. Jake turned to her with a broad beam on his face, and she relished when his jaw dropped.

"I wasn't snooping," she told him to set it straight before he could get the wrong idea. "You left the journal open." After a brief pause, she stepped back so he could get the full view and asked with a flirty smile, "So, do I look anything like your dream girl?"

"Ames, you've always been my dream girl."

* * *

 **One act of hello and none of goodbye.  
You have my favorite pair of hands. Your fingers that interlace perfectly with mine, your palm that fits right over my heart, your callouses that light my nerves on fire.**  
 **Your skin was made to meet mine.**

"If I asked you to draw me something, would you?" Amy asked randomly one morning. Jake was lying on the couch flipping through the TV channels (since he had the annoying habit of changing the channel every time a commercial break popped on) so the question seemed out of the blue when she walked up behind him. Her asking was more of a formality because she knew he wouldn't refuse.

"I supposed I could break out my magic fingers for you, Santiago. If you ask nicely." Jake teased, cracking said fingers for emphasis.

"I want a picture of me and you. One where you actually look like a human and have a face."

He grimaced at her requirements. Amy had absolutely no idea why he was so opposed to drawing himself, because if she had his talent the only thing she would draw would be him. He always complained that it was boring and a waste of time, and she had to admit that if the situations were reversed she probably wouldn't want to spend time on her own image either. But they weren't in that situation, and even if Jake would never accept it (even though he could be counted on making an egotistical joke about it), he had a really nice face.

"It's gonna look weird. Even though you get to see it, I don't have the privilege of always looking at my hot bod," (there it was) "So I'll look like a weird robot in a Jake suit. Or like a lizard alien in a Jake skin. Or six garden gnomes in... you get the idea," he finished, but Amy was positive the only reason he stopped there was because he couldn't think of any more words that meant some sort of creature had skinned him alive or whatever.

"I knew you were gonna say that. Or something weird like that, so I brought this," she said and held up her back up plan.

It was a simple photo of the two of them. They were sitting next to each other on a swing set at the park, but they weren't actually swinging. The memory was a good one, and Jake could practically still feel the wood chips under his feet as he kicked idly at them and how hot the chains were as his gripped them. He remembered all the smiles, but that wasn't the important thing. They were just being them, together.

One of them had said something funny because the photo was taken when they were both in mid-laughter and looked so incredibly carefree. It was strange to see the two of them together like that, all guard let down, from an outside perspective. A welcome strangeness, though.

And Amy was wearing that yellow dress that made her look like she walked out of a fairy tale.

Jake was going to have to give her a hard time later for her not showing it to him sooner, since it was taken at Cagney and Lacey's birthday party a few months back (though he didn't even know that someone had even taken it at the time). They just looked so damn happy, and he loved it.

"What's the magic word?" He asked in the most patronizing tone he could manage with a smirk.

Amy just kissed him in response in her typical Santiago breathtaking fashion, and it was so not fair how she could kiss him so fiercely and then pull back like nothing happened.. "Magic enough for you?"

"It'll have to do."

* * *

 **You.  
That's all I need to know.**

It took him longer than Amy would have thought to finish it. Over two weeks, and no matter how many times she begged for a preview, he was adamant in his refusal. Jake wasted at least $50 worth of crumpled up paper, and it was the day she never thought she'd see: her partner being a perfectionist. Still, Amy was dying of anticipation to see what it looked like when he was finally satisfied with the finished product.

When he showed it to her, it was filled with the one thing she wasn't expecting.

Color.

Vibrant and beautiful watercolors flowed together seamlessly, some of the brightest shades she had ever seen. It was like when you read a book and picture a character, and then the movie gets picked up and they cast the perfect actor that looks just like how you imagined, but this was so much more. It looked like a dream and a poem and a symphony and every sigh of her name she had ever heard him breathe. Somehow Jake had translated all of the best parts of life into something visible. All of the smiles, laughter, heart pounding, sweet kisses, sexy kisses, hand holding, happiness, and most importantly all of the "I love you's" were there.

It took her a moment to realize how cliché all of those thoughts were, but that didn't change them. It didn't change the fact that she felt so happy she could cry.

"I thought you were no good with colors," Amy said softly when she realize that Jake was waiting for her reaction.

"I've been practicing for you," he smiled childishly, and she recalled some days over the past months where he would have colored marks on his hands that he always had an excuse planned for (such as "getting carried away" with scented markers, and some less ridiculous ones too). Amy didn't know how he had managed to hide almost all of the evidence of painting, but it meant so much more that he had been working on something other than gray for so long- all for her.

"Jake... I love it. It's perfect," she told him. She didn't think she would ever be able to find the right words for just how much she loved it, and she knew that no word existed for just how much she loved him.

"Yeah, you are," he responded, and Amy couldn't help but laugh.

"That has got to be the corniest thing I have ever heard you say."

Still, she kissed him anyway.

* * *

 **If your stars burn out, take mine. You're bright enough for the both of us.**

* * *

 **AN:**  
 **Please let me know if I did a good job, and if I may have created a new headcannon for you. And tell me if the bold lines were annoying or something, and even if they seem kinda random, I did at least try. And they're all original, so let me down easy if they were over the top x)**  
 **And disclaimer, I have never been to New York, so I tried to get the park scene as accurate as possible (google can only help so much). The lovely nude statue (part of a fountain actually) that makes its home at Prospect Park is called the Bailey fountain, and it really exists.**  
 **And I know it's been a while since I've updated Marco Polo, but I'm working on it! Sorry for the long wait!**


End file.
